Why is social media important for business?

The World Wide Web is an extremely competitive business place, no doubts. That’s why keeping up to speed on the hottest new trends is critical to every business person. We all know how to do advertising on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. But believe me, there are still lots of entrepreneurs at our local business club who scratch their heads saying something like “yeah, maybe I should finally get around to Social Media”. One question to those business people: How could you be a business owner and not have a strategic vision or social media strategy?

Social media is the greatest tool to get to know your audience, its desires and through that to reach prospects and more loyal customers who will certainly drive your business.

As Social Media is a substantial part of any business marketing strategy, it is of some use to look deeper at this tool of digital marketing.

Why is social media important for your business?

First, trust (people do not treat social media as an advertisement and trust the information), wide coverage of target audience, low prices of advertising performance, connection with the audience (includes feedback and ability to quickly respond to inquiries and complaints), great chance to show your brand’s distinctiveness, not to speak about increasing sales and loyalty to brand to a certain extent. But do not forget about negative aspects: no immediate results, constant work on information update, news and articles publication, no guarantees, and finally, there are some serious businesses like B2B or medical services, and many others that do not use social media due to their very nature.

Customers’ attention is thrown about different social platforms, apps, and messengers. We are becoming ever-more-picky to goods and services we consume. (I personally think it is a virtue in some way.) That’s why brands lay themselves out in order to stand out of the crowd, promoting their goods and personal brand by all possible means.

That was a short summary. As for the recent tendencies I noticed in Social Media Marketing, Video content is beyond competition. Text content is losing momentum if I may say so. People love visual imagery. Facebook Watch, Youtube, Instagram stories and IGTV and so on are the tools for both the permanent and ephemeral content. What content to choose depends on the behavior of the audience and on the platform itself. For instance, Instagram Stories grow in popularity because of frisky quick content full of gizmos like filters, polls, colored text, and GIF-files etc. and it requires the development of the newest approach to creating content. Using these Stories can help your brand to declare itself and show its individuality quickly and without essential efforts.

Moreover, such ephemeral content provides you with the best engagement rates. Agree that such authentic and up-to-the-minute content has credibility as opposed to carefully prepared and polished content in News Feed. If you ask me what I think of it, I would answer that it’s a cause-effect link to the mosaic thinking of new generations, which are able to perceive the world only through short bright images and messages.

Now the time is ripe for social TV and vertical videos. And consequently, it requires brands a cutting edge approach of creating content. The main feature of IGTV, for example, is that it’s comfortably located right at the top corner drawing the eye of every user. In addition, such content is taken as appealing and quite fascinating.

The second trend is micro-influencers’ participation. No need to specify who influencers are. People treat them as friends and even family and listen to their opinion and recommendations willingly. That’s a fact. Still, there is a little trick: do not buy the number of followers, pay attention to the activity of influencer (use hashtags) and loyalty of his/her audience (P.S. Fake follower are out of favor and Instagram itself tackles that issue in-depth) and creativity have been rewarded at all times.

Chatbots. That is not those bumbling robots anymore, so do not be a skeptic. It’s all about Artificial Intelligence. Their assignment is to connect the brands with their customers quickly creating an illusion of being treated personally. I personally had an amazing experience with bots on Facebook and Telegram! Now they have even sense of humor so they can be much more pleasant mixer than people sometimes. It represents a concept of 24/7 customer support allowing to solve all current issues of theirs and for you to get their money.

Pinterest and eCommerce! An ideal combination. It’s a great opportunity to shop on a social platform. Instagram has this option as well. Extremely useful and comfortable for the user, and most lucrative for the business.

Do not forget about messengers. They are flourishing. WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat, Telegram etc. They all have made fundamental steps beyond “just messaging” towards eCommerce, bots, and Stories that caused a great stir.

And the last but not the least tendency is people’s preoccupation with social data. People clamor transparency and security of their personal data. We all have heard about Facebook let call it “failure”. So I completely support this trend, no offense, Facebook. We got this extremely-targeted personalization using “cookies” and so on. So it is of great importance to walk a fine line between the ability to offer a personalized ad and being too aggressive. Yes, it is desirable for marketers to find another method of collecting users’ data, more regardful and based on two-way communication.

All I want to say by this article is that Social Media is a bottomless pit of opportunities for business and… for fun naturally. Why social media is important for business? Promotion in Social Media will guarantee you if not overnight success than great progress at least.

Do you use social media while promoting your business? Give your answers in the comment section. I will be glad to know, what channels do you use for your marketing campaigns.

Blogger. Writer. Occasional Public speaker. Currently in the business of Human Resource Management.
Often branded as Crazy and Eccentric, I have always sought to push traditional boundaries and live life to the fullest.
Areas which fascinate me include Philosophy, Human and Organizational Psychology, Literature, Food, Common Sense and Mindfulness.